I found myself on two mining expeditions into my various boxes of memories, photographs and assorted fragments of a life well-lived this week. First, I went looking for a script of The Odd Couple, which I was convinced I had, buried somewhere since I directed the show back in 1993 or 1994 with Gilbert and+ Read More

“An eye on you” by Megan Storrar The paintings started coming in early in the day on May 26, and kept arriving right into the HOPE in the ART event, beautifully filling up the space in the Keyano Art Gallery. They came from established artists and younger artists. “Where are you going?”“Out.”by Susan Horton by+ Read More

Keyano College was a big part of the reason I came to Fort McMurray. Kelly Boyd, general manager of CJOK and KYX 98, took me to see Keyano Theatre as part of my tour when I was here interviewing for a programming job. It was one of the crown jewels of the community at the+ Read More

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, While I write this, my dearest cousins are standing over the body of their beloved father, my uncle, my mentor. He died in his sleep after his annual spring trip to Montreal with Marcel, his middle son,+ Read More

My mother-in-law was sitting on the sofa during her recent visit, reading Terry Fallis’s third novel. Every few minutes she would let out a big guffaw and start chortling uncontrollably. That is part of the Terry Fallis effect. I heard about his first novel while listening to Canada Reads on CBC. Defended by Ali Velshi,+ Read More

We have a deck in our backyard. It was here when we bought the place back in 1999 and has weathered multiple seasons with very little love. Whatever treatment it had 15 years ago had faded to nothing, with the wood having the patina of the adjacent treated lumber that marks out our raised flower+ Read More

TEDxFortMcMurray is coming up on September 20th with the theme of “Pioneering”. Presenter hopefuls are going through the mental process of figuring out what to put in their applications and imagining what the auditions are going to be like. In my experience (from 2012), the entire process was amazing, from beginning to end, though not+ Read More

“Don’t apply it if the temperature drops below 10-degrees, or if there is a chance of rain or snow” said the lady at the paint counter. She really did say “snow”, though if I was stringent about following the first rule, one would presume that there would be none of the white stuff in sight.+ Read More

I have become my father in more ways than I care to admit. Charlie is a putterer. He likes to keep busy, fixing, cleaning and painting things. He likes to fix things that have broken with available bits and pieces, collected over many decades and stored in drawers, buckets and baskets. Unless it is completely+ Read More

We have arrived at the May long weekend, the great divide between spring and summer that signals the official end of a long stretch of winter and the beginning of an idyllic northern summer. I suspect we’ll see an exodus from town later today, as families dart south for big city escapades and camping adventures.+ Read More